Oral Motor Fun: Making Bubble Prints

As you may already know, Penguin is very keen on Shaun the Sheep and Big Cook, Little Cook. Another favorite show since toddlerhood is Teletubbies, and one of the clips he enjoys the most at the moment shows a group of kids making bubble prints. Perhaps you’ve seen it, too?

The action of blowing is a great oral motor exercise, popular with SLPs and OTs, so I thought it could be useful as well as good fun to give this a go ourselves…

The kids waving to us on our screen, through Dipsys tubby-screen: “We’re making bubble pictures! Come and see!”

Now, this isn’t the first time we’ve tried this. Last time it didn’t work amazingly well for us, the pictures turned out quite faint, and Penguin hadn’t yet got the hang of blowing rather than sucking through the straw, so he managed to get a good few mouthfuls of the bubbly paint mixture… Surely we’d do better this time!

Well, I’ll be honest and tell you it took two attempts before we actually got any pictures out of this exercise. But we had a pretty good time trying, and I’d say that making bubble prints is probably always going to be mostly about the process. Penguin enjoyed making the colourful bubble mixture and blowing bubbles in it, but wasn’t that bothered about the resulting prints. Which was just as well on our first go, as the prints did not come out at all!

Attempt Numero Uno:

We mixed a little bit of water with fairy liquid in two different bowls, and added hobby paints. White paint went into both bowls, then some red in one and some green in the other. So far so good, all bubbly and looking vibrant!

Unfortunately it seems like not enough pigment made it up to the top of the bubbles, as pretty much nothing showed on the papers we ‘printed’ with this mixture. The grass got it’s fair share of paint though, as did Penguin’s face!

Attempt Numero Dos:

Another day, another try. This time with food colouring instead of hobby paints, after having had a look online to see what types of pigments and paints that others had been using (which was pretty inconclusive, as almost anything except our hobby paints seems to work haha).

We also chose to use a white, watercolour type of paper, to maximise the chances of any pigment showing up on the finished prints. And this time… it worked! The colours got a bit murky, mainly due to Penguin wanting to mix ALL of them together… but I think the prints look pretty smart anyway. Like moons, or planets maybe?

So, now we know how to (as well as how NOT to) make bubble prints! I think it’s a great activity for outdoors, where you can let the colourful foam blow around without worrying about walls or floors. Have you tried making bubble prints, and if so, did you enjoy the process?

Yeah, bubble printing is awesome. You need to add lots of washing up liquid and a bit of water first, mix it up and then add paint. It works better the more you use it. It’s a tricky activity with my class because they all tend to suck first if all! It produces a lot of fun a nd laughter though! Lovely post. #dreamteam

It looks like you had lots of fun! Have you tried making bubble snakes? You cut the end off a plastic bottle, then pull a sock over the cut end of it. You dip the sock in bubble mixture and then blow through the neck of the bottle. I’ve not tried adding paint, but you could add paint to it too. The bubble snakes are great fun even without the paint. #CoolMumClub

Thank you Debbie! Your suggestion about bubble snakes is great! We haven’t tried that yet, though it’s something I’ve seen others do and have thought “we should do that” 😊 I’ve got as far as saving a couple of empty bottles for it. Seems like a lot of fun! xx

Yes, just the action of blowing has taken time to learn for our Penguin to learn. As I understand it, oral motor difficulties are common in combination with speech delays. It’s great to find different types of exercises to motivate and make it fun. I hope you all have great fun with this! x